faith

Dogs: A Theological Palindrome

jamescalvindavis

A sermon preached at the Congregational Chuch of Middlebury (VT) on August 3, 2025

Texts: Genesis 2:15–22; 1 Corinthians 13

Friends, in my time with you all this summer, I have talked about some weighty considerations to being Christian in our particular moment. In June, I suggested that the most important witness we could offer in this divisive and dehumanizing time is to stand for the capaciousness in the Christian Gospel, the Good News that God loves all of us, that God desires relationship with all of us, and that God calls us to exercise this wide embrace in our relationships with others as an antidote to the hate all around us. Last month, I suggested that liberal Christianity ought to embrace a robust role in our political life, even engaging in partisan debates when it is clear that particular parties and politicians stand for values we consider godly and others clearly do not.

Today I want to talk with you about a dimension of the Christian life that is at least as important as these topics, one that some of you practice with righteous enthusiasm day after day, but that others of you may find a challenge to your sense of Christian responsibility. I want to talk to you today about the theological importance, the importance to a godly life, of dogs.

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Capacious Christianity

jamescalvindavis

A Pentecost sermon preached at the Congregational Church of Middlebury, VT, on June 8, 2025

Friends, I want to suggest to you today that we are ripe for a new Pentecost. The world in our moment needs people who are set afire and possessed with a message of grace and hospitality and inclusion, to push against the destructive trinity of arrogance, fear, and dehumanization that now reigns. We need a new Pentecost. We need the rebirth of capacious Christianity.

Click the link below to watch the full sermon:
https://www.facebook.com/MiddUCC/videos/3955528118003925

Birth Pangs

jamescalvindavis

A sermon preached at Putnam United Presbyterian Church November 17, 2024

Text: Mark 13:1–27

Well, we can say this much: another presidential election is over. Roughly half of the country is pumped and feeling bullish about the future, while the other half is collecting canned foods and researching bomb shelters online. But we can say this pretty confidently: no matter who you were rooting for, this election cycle was brutal to endure. I made the comment last month during the concerns and joys that the only thing that seems to unite Americans these days is the nausea we all were feeling about the election.

A cloud of doom settled in over this election and the perception many of us have about the health of our country and state of the world, and this pessimism really was a nonpartisan experience. We saw it in Republican TV ads that depicted the US as being overrun by marauders from the south and cast into a new Great Depression by an economy allegedly driven into the ground. Democrats matched those doom-and-gloom pictures of the country with their own predictions of the end of democracy and Western civilization if they lost. And since the Democrats lost (in spectacular fashion), the anguish has only intensified with Democratic leaders and voters wearing black, crying openly, packing go bags, and either doomscrolling addictively or retreating from social media as if it were the comforting days of the 1990s.

Wherever you are on the political spectrum, if you’ve been paying attention to politics, our reality has felt ominous to you at some point recently. Today’s Gospel reading fits right into our current collective mood, because there is a lot of doom in this story, too.

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Who Are God’s People?

jamescalvindavis

A sermon preached at Putnam Presbyterian Church on September 8, 2024

Sermon text: Mark 7:24–30

Of all the stories of Jesus told to us by the Gospel writers, this one is—hands-down—the least flattering. In the first part of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is wandering around, teaching and performing miracles, but largely staying out of the spotlight, for he has decided that the time has not yet come to reveal himself in full to the world. In that spirit, he sneaks into a house in the region of Tyre, presumably with a sympathetic follower, perhaps to catch a meal and some rest. But his reputation precedes him, and soon a woman intrudes and sits at his feet. This woman is a Gentile, which in biblical parlance means that she is not Jewish. And in case we didn’t catch that important detail, the storyteller emphasizes that she is Syrophoenician. She is not Jewish, but she comes to this Jewish healer with a dire need. Her daughter is ill. In that ancient worldview, the girl is considered to have a demon, and she needs help. So her mother falls at the feet of Jesus and begs him to come and lay hands on her daughter.

Jesus’ response is abrupt, and, to readers of this story ever since, very puzzling. He says to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Translation: I am here for the people of Israel, not for Gentiles. But not only does he refuse to help her because she is not Jewish, the way he puts it peddles in insults. Dogs he calls her kind. The Messiah of God refers to Gentiles as animals.

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The Devil You Know

jamescalvindavis

Artwork: Satan Arousing the Fallen Angels, John Martin, 1824

A sermon delivered at Hebron United Presbyterian Church 10/8/23
Scriptures: Exodus 20:1–20; Matthew 4:1–11

When I was young, my mom had a record collection that included a couple of Flip Wilson’s comedy albums. Flip Wilson was a comedian popular in the 60s and 70s. For a period of time in my teenage years, I listened to those albums constantly. This was before the internet, before cable or satellite TV made it to the boondocks where I lived, so this was my entertainment. Listening to Mom’s Flip Wilson records over and over again.

Flip Wilson had one particular series of sketches I found absolutely hilarious. These sketches featured him telling stories about Geraldine, who he sometimes imagined as a preacher’s wife, who had a penchant for spending her husband’s money on things she didn’t need and blaming it on the devil—the devil made me do it, she would say. In his TV comedy skits, he dressed the part of Geraldine, which of course didn’t come through on the albums, but the voice he did for Geraldine was funny enough.

The sketches were hilarious because Geraldine would concoct elaborate stories for how the devil made her do things of which her husband disapproved. The devil made her buy that expensive dress, she protested. The devil made her go into the store and try it on. The devil told her how good she looked in that dress. She would put up a fight—“devil, no,” she would say—but ultimately, the devil made her sign her husband’s name to a check. The devil made her buy that dress.

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